Wanting to re-create my tiefling pyro battle mage from 4th ed in 3.5...

[samcifer]

Okay, I've read the books, but am having a hard time getting all the differences between 4th ed. and 3.5. I know that there are more components to spells (gestures, vocal components, ingredients - the official names escape me at the moment as I'm at work with limited internet access and can't access most sites, though I can get here, oddly enough), but re-creating my character has proven rather confusing due to all the changes in how spellcasting works.

I know I need high Intelligence and Constitution for both spellcasting as well as survivability. I was thinking of maybe changing him to a sorcerer to get around needing to prepare spells in advance to give myself more flexibility (my 4th ed DM waved the need to prepare spells in advance as a house rule), so I'd go with Charisma instead of Intelligence if I went this route.

My goals are to be a striker spellcaster with some controller flexibility using fire damage and a few spells for special situations were fire won't work (like fighting a flame elemental, for example - "I don't get it..." shoots another fireball, "I was told to fight fire with fire!"). I also want some survivability, so I was thinking of some form of armor. My main requirements are maximum accuracy as I have horrible luck on die rolls as well as survivability with damage as a third goal, but less important than the first two.

So what kinds of things should I focus upon, based on all of this?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help with this.

[Uckleverry]

If you want a simple solution, which is a blaster mage that can fling elemental spells and a few battlefield control spells, that can wear armor and doesn't have to prepare spells -- then go for the warmage class from Complete Arcane. They use Charisma as their spellcasting stat, with a damage bonus from Intelligence.

In general though, control spells are much, much stronger in 3.5 than 4e, and dealing damage as a spellcaster is considerably less powerful than denying enemies their actions. And you can simply destroy enemies with higher level spells, bypassing their hit points altogether.

Spell accuracy is what you'd call spell DC in 3.5, although touch attacks do exist for ray spells and melee range spells. Note that 3.5's equivalent to close spells do provoke opportunity attacks (but you can avoid them by using the Concentration skill).

[samcifer]

In 4th ed., I had the online 'handbooks' that covered every skill, power, feat, etc. for each class and was able to use those to help me pick the better spells to go with. Is there any similar resources for 3.5 I could use?

[Uckleverry]

Search online for "3.5 [class name] handbook" or "guide". Note that 4e optimization doesn't yield as dramatic results as 3.5 optimization. The difference between an optimized and a non-optimized 3.5 mage can be massive, whereas in 4e you're talking about relatively minor differences -- at least when compared to what you can achieve with 3.5.